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Cui Bono? The 1870 British Married Women'S Property Act, Bargaining Power, And The Distribution Of Resources Within Marriage

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  • Mary Beth Combs

Abstract

The 1870 Married Women's Property Act created major change in nineteenth-century British property law. Until the passage of the Act, a husband had legal ownership over his wife's personal property and managerial rights over her real property. The Act granted British women the right to own and control personal property and therefore serves as a natural experiment to test the impact of a legislative change on the distribution of household resources. The article examines whether the Act enabled women to gain a larger share of household resources and alter the distribution of resources within the household. The results indicate that the rights granted to women by the Act dramatically increased the bargaining power and property of wives: wives married after the Act owned a larger share of total household property and invested less of their own income and more of their husband's in forms of property they owned and controlled.

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  • Mary Beth Combs, 2006. "Cui Bono? The 1870 British Married Women'S Property Act, Bargaining Power, And The Distribution Of Resources Within Marriage," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1-2), pages 51-83.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:femeco:v:12:y:2006:i:1-2:p:51-83
    DOI: 10.1080/13545700500508262
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kanbur, R., 1991. "Linear Expenditure Systems, Children as Public Goods and Intra-Household Inequality," Papers 104, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hyland, Marie & Djankov, Simeon & Goldberg, Pinelopi, 2021. "Do gendered laws matter?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118845, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Doss, Cheryl R. & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth, 2015. "Collective Action within the Household: Insights from Natural Resource Management," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 171-183.
    3. Hyland,Marie Caitriona,Islam,Asif Mohammed, 2021. "Gendered Laws, Informal Origins, and Subsequent Performance," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9766, The World Bank.
    4. Janette Rutterford & David R. Green & Josephine Maltby & Alastair Owens, 2011. "Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(1), pages 157-187, February.
    5. Janette Rutterford & Josephine Maltby, 2006. "“The Widow, The Clergyman And The Reckless”: Women Investors In England, 1830—1914," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(1-2), pages 111-138.
    6. Carmen Deere & Abena Oduro & Hema Swaminathan & Cheryl Doss, 2013. "Property rights and the gender distribution of wealth in Ecuador, Ghana and India," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(2), pages 249-265, June.
    7. Doss, Cheryl & Kim, Sung Mi & Njuki, Jemimah & Hillenbrand, Emily & Miruka, Maureen, 2014. "Women’s individual and joint property ownership: Effects on household decisionmaking:," IFPRI discussion papers 1347, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economics of the family; British women's property rights; bargaining power; intrahousehold resource distribution; JEL Codes: N13; D13; K11;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N13 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law

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